


a true heart to tough this poison

by rkahks



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Book 4 Retelling, Character Study, F/F, Mental Health Issues, expands on Korra Alone
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-13
Updated: 2020-12-13
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:34:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28037001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rkahks/pseuds/rkahks
Summary: And alone in her room, with her lungs fully filled, Korra still gasps for air.
Relationships: Korra/Asami Sato
Comments: 1
Kudos: 31





	a true heart to tough this poison

**Author's Note:**

> had this draft laying around my drive since the beginning of the quarantine. my mental state went on a trip the last few months, and i've noticed it has affected my writing. but there will still come to be a positive outcome of this, though, and i'll tell more about it in the upcoming chapters. for now i just hope you enjoy. special thanks to anybody i've spoken about this fic to.

Away, the wind howls. With a movement of his arms, Zaheer drains the air past Korra’s lips. Her world flips; she breaks. Her chest wraps itself along her lungs, tighlier, tighlier as Zaheer pulls. And he pulls, he pulls, he pulls, he pulls, he pul

The transition from tight to loose happens too quickly for her to keep up with, and alone in her room, with her lungs fully filled, Korra still gasps for air.

_Dear Korra,_

_I’m sorry I didn’t write sooner, I’ve been kept busy. Same old, same old: rebuilding Republic City will take some more time, and I don’t think I will be working on much else for the next year. But we’ve been making progress! I don’t know if I mentioned, but before actually starting to work on the project, we had to study the spirit vines, to know what we would be dealing with. Back then, Tenzin told me that, although it seemed that their growth had stabilized and come to a halt, it was still possible that they would react to the new roads. Well, after three weeks under construction, they did. A few vines started growing again, creeping their way across the concrete pillars. We even paused the project for two weeks to see what would come out of this, but that was as far as they would go, curled around the pylon base, and they didn’t bother us any more than that. Maybe they are adapting to us the same way we are adapting to them._

_I’m happy with how it’s turning out, and I think you will be too, once it’s done. I’ll be happy to show you around, when you get back. Working so much with roads and around the spirit vines makes me think a lot of when I tried to teach you how to drive (do you remember that?). We could resume our lessons, if you wanted to._

_Please, let me know of you._

_Asami_

It’s been weeks since Korra defeated Zaheer, but danger still bursts in bright flashes to her sometimes. It freezes her body until the fog lifts up, takes all the space in her head and in her dreams; there’s smoke pouring out of her ears. At nights, when she can’t sleep, she wheels over to be under the Spirit Lights, and looks up at them. She looks up, thinks, _I once gave room for you to dance in the skies, it was me; please, help me, too_ , and wonders if they’ve noticed her absence.

Korra's recovery at the South Pole is slow and hollow, and these qualities don’t make a good tale to tell, so she doesn’t write as much as she is written to. But she reads all of her friend's letters, nevertheless. In those, they are enthusiastic and supportive, and avoid talking about what happened to her by talking about what’s been happening to them: Asami has been designing a new adaptable infrastructure for Republic City, Tenzin has been leading an Air Nation that helps the world, Mako has been busting triad leaders, Bolin has been helping bring order back to the Earth Kingdom… and what has Korra been up to?

It’s an ugly resentment that blossoms in her chest, and that she is cautious not to give a voice to. How could she? It isn’t fair with them, to be mad that they moved on with their lives. Besides, she wouldn’t know how.

The sight of a half-dead friend makes you see things from a different perception, and that can be too overwhelming for a heart to take, she _gets_ it. When Korra doesn’t recover immediately, no one knows what to do, least of all her. To watch your friends take a step back, look inside, and not come back forward— the newly-formed distance makes it hard for them to know what to say to her, and for her to know what to say to them in response. Eventually, in the South, she starts not _wanting_ to say anything, and sometimes that’s the reason she doesn’t send letters. So much for being cautious, then: her resentment ends up being given voice through her silence. The roots are forming curls around her ribcage.

But that’s— that’s alright. Discomfort may have set them apart, but Korra knows they still care. Besides, some friends _do_ come back forward, like Mom and Dad and Asami and Tenzin. Her parents welcome her back in their routine without thinking twice. Asami stands by her at all times when they’re close, and writes eagerly when they’re apart. Tenzin comes to visit her at the South Pole, rests a hand on her shoulder and reassures her that all will be well with time, but then time makes the words sound emptier as it passes, a year, then two, then three, and Korra starts to think that time doesn’t get her.

She’s exhausted with restraint, could come as close as to say it feels like things are still the same as when she arrived in the South three years ago, if she didn’t know better that they are so, so different — she’s regained part of her control now and she will never take that for granted again. But it’s still not enough. She needs the movement, she needs the action, she needs the change. At dinner, Korra announces to her parents that she wants to go back to Republic City; later that week, she’s on her own boat, alone and promising not to forget to write.

When the southern lights give way to the warm breeze, Korra feels a small bit of all the things she’s been missing the past three years, and hope takes a corner in her chest again. Not for long: shadows of her past appear to her from afar, chase her away from wherever she goes. Korra sees an old self with her hair down and covered in wounds, and turns her boat the opposite direction; she’s not ready yet.

At the edges of a small village, now all in green instead of in blues and browns, she slits her hair above the shoulder. If she can’t be the Avatar, she won’t pretend she is. Looking at her own reflection in the water feels like looking at someone else’s; this sudden change gives her a new sense of liberty she hasn’t felt in a long time. _Maybe this anonymity will be good for me_ , she thinks. But then she catches a shadowy version of herself in the corner of her eye, and sees Zaheer in flashes again, and gets reminded that, in the end, she’s still Korra.

_Dear Korra,_

_It’s so good to hear from you. I’m glad to know that you’ve been enjoying my ramblings about engineering, I admit I don’t always do. So much so that recently I decided to take a break from the engines and roads to launch myself at fashion design! Just kidding. Well, partially. I’ve been working on a new, more practical getup for the airbenders as a side personal project._

_The idea is to have the glider’s technology integrated into their outfits, so they don’t need a staff to take flight. Since Tenzin is so attached to the Air Nomads’ old culture and customs, (and justifiably so), I was anxious about bringing it up at first, but he was incredibly receptive to it and eager to help._

_I had to mix concepts of bending, aerodynamic, fabric and fashion into one single thing, and it seems like a lot but it’s more easily manageable when you break it down in parts. Tenzin has approved of the concept, and we’ll be running tests soon._

_The other airbenders like the idea too, but one of them mentioned it was a pity that they would have to leave the staffs behind. This led up to a debate that divided them, some emphasizing on the cultural loss it was and others saying that accepting the new means letting go of the old. I don’t think any of the sides are wrong. Culture molds technology the same way technology molds culture, and that has a value on its own. What’s been lost will always be remembered, but that doesn’t mean something meaningful can’t grow out of it._

_How is your recovery with Katara going?_

_Wishing you well,_

_Asami_

For about six months, Korra wanders around lands, up north, down south, out into the world where she thinks she can take her destiny back into her own hands. For how hard she tried to understand why her enemies tried to crush her, now she finds herself mirroring those patterns, constantly launching herself to extremes, as if only through the on-going damage could she find what she yearns for. When burnt out muscles win her over, Korra settles for the night, be it under the stars or under a shelter; but whenever her mind wanders, it always falls to the same search.

Traveling far and wide across the nations, Korra often thinks back to the times she was hidden away in the South — not only in these past three years but in her childhood as well. Out in the world, now, she’s amazed to find villages that live harmoniously through tight ties, villagers who live in behalf of each other; economies that fall over the shoulders of a single group of workers, people who lay out their tablecloths on the floor and share what they have amongst themselves. For having always been so sheltered, Korra never thought strangers could be so kind.

Two specific occasions have resonated with her specifically, though. The first one is in the same week she cuts her own hair, when she meets this woman who smiles warmly at her after Korra helps her lay her vegetables on a table at the street market. The woman gestures to Korra’s hair, points out its uneven cut at the edges, and offers to help working on that if Korra comes back to her at the end of the day. Korra doesn’t, but she runs into the woman afterwards, and ends up helping her carry her bags home. As the offer still stands, more insistently so, and Korra’s too self-conscious at this point to turn it away a second time, she finds herself sitting on a chair in a stranger’s house, with her daughter laying a cloth across her shoulders while holding some scissors.

She trimmers the ends accordingly, and it doesn’t quite change much lengthwise, but it does make Korra stop flinching at her own reflection in the mirror. She thanks them. A man, the husband, enters the house. Korra is offered dinner and a bed to spend the night, and she accepts it.

A family willing to shelter a stranger for the night would have been remarkable on its own, but her first chance of tasting the waters as she interacts with people anonymously also turns out to be remarkable. In this disguise, she’s an earthbender who’s travelling to find more about the world. That’s as far as she manages to come up with, being the shitty liar that she is, but the daughter seems amazed nevertheless: “Like the Avatar! Oh, I wish.”

Korra blinks. The only trip she ever took was across the Earth Kingdom, in the search for the new airbenders, three years ago. But she wonders what people think about her?

The next morning, they all wake up along with the earth to go to work. The husband offers her a gig, paving a stretch of land that will be used as a road, and Korra could use the money. There, the workers spend around ten hours lifting and molding and sledging and filling, tireless, taking a break only for lunch, which they each have with their backs pressed alongside a great boulder. Always in touch with their element.

Korra sits next to the husband, who is stern and quiet, but gentle enough not to make her feel out of place. Picking at his food, he comments that she looks a lot like ‘the Avatar girl’, and that’s something Korra will hear a fair amount of times along this journey.

“My girls look up to her. _Eh, finally a woman in power to show you men who’s boss,_ ” he mimics, chuckling. Korra chuckles, too, missing Katara.

“She’s been away for some time, huh,” she prompts.

He shrugs. “Nothing has changed here.”

Korra’s heart twitches. She hopes her voice doesn’t sound uneven when she insists, “Don’t you think she’s important? Somehow?”

“Sure.” The husband tilts his head, thoughtful. “Her balance only doesn’t get to me.”

At the end of the expedient, Korra joins him on the way to the street market to buy food for dinner, and she insists on pitching in; back at his house, she helps make dinner while he listens to the radio, and, after they all eat, she and the husband take off the table while the woman and the daughter rest; all of this, she can’t tell if out of pride, gratitude or shame, so in the next morning she decides to leave.

At their front door, Korra is handed a tiny box with food.

“You’re a very hard-working young woman. Take care.” The woman says, smiling warmly again. The husband nods and the daughter waves her goodbye.

Briefly, Korra looks at this family, with whom she has lived for two days as an anonymous earthbender, and wonders how they would react if she told them the truth. “I’m your Avatar,” Korra would say; but she thinks about being looked up to and about not having changed anything, then takes the box and leaves with a heavy heart.

The second occasion she’s met with kindness is when she comes across a voluntary group of earth and metalbenders in a low-infrastructured small village. It’s easier to lose track of time when you don’t have to keep up with formal events or work-out routines; in a blink, weeks and land limits blur together the same way spirit vines do, as Korra stumbles over them at this other corner of the Earth Kingdom. In all the places she’s been to so far, she could always peek a vine or so, wrapped across a wall or laid across a street. They’ve grown wider the past years, and not rarely Korra finds herself amidst them, meditating — the energy they emanate makes the waft hit differently, feel more peaceful, and she could use some spiritual connection. But in this village, the peaceful clashes with heartbreaking when she sees the untouched damage the wilderness has caused: three years have passed and people are still displaced. But, from edge to edge, comes this group of benders who raise up walls, however they can for whoever they can, people who’ve been active in social causes like this one for years now; Korra joins them.

Actually, to say ‘join’ would be an overstatement; raising a building is no short-term job, and with so much worry in her head, she couldn’t plan on staying for longer than a few days. But for the time she sticks with them, bit by bit, her ache eases down with each wall she bends up. It feels exhilarating to be part of something that helps so many, especially because it was she who left the portals open three years ago and brought the vines. This feels like atoning for her negligence; every sledge of earth is a quiet apology. But eventually her worry catches up, and with it an urge to keep her search: she must go. Her apologies change tone, and now she’s sorry for not being able to help more. But she _should_...

“It’s been so good to help you guys on this,” she tells her peers by the end of the afternoon, the day before her departure. And then, with the weight of responsibility in her chest: “I had no idea so many were displaced from the portals left open...”

The project director shakes her head. “The vines have made a number on this area, but that’s an issue that comes from long before the portals.”

Korra shoots up one eyebrow quizzically. The director must have given similar speeches a few times before, because it is without missing a beat that she explains: “See, if it isn’t nature taking its course, then it’s gonna be industries violating caution measures, _or_ governors neglecting parts of their population…”

Another earthbender expands: “Yeah, I used to volunteer as a driver, transporting groups of nurses and healers who would take care and offer guidance to citizens that lived in isolated areas and couldn’t reach downtown.” And then, exasperatedly: “These people should’ve had access to healthcare provided by their governor, but that wasn’t the case!”

“The responsibility ends up on our laps.” The director concludes. “From my experience, I say it connects us.”

The words shift in Korra’s chest. A memory comes back to her, from when she was told a similar lecture from a loved one. Katara, Tenzin, Dad, whoever it was… Korra can’t quite remember; she dismissed the words as empty talk the moments they reached her ears. Now, from a stranger to another, if only they could’ve been a trigger in her heart instead, the way her friends and family would have wanted.

What those both occasions have in common to have resonated with Korra is the shame they’ve brought. In a way, for three years now, all she’s been managing to do was try to make up for her absence by storing the fault of things in her heart— if she was there things wouldn’t have come this way, if she was better things could have been another way… that’s why she can’t raise her head to these people. But three years is a long time for those who don’t know to wait, and her heart has become too full of guilt already to let the fault in. And at Korra’s failed attempts of carrying the world inside her chest, it swells all the more fuller. Rinse, repeat. Korra leaves the voluntary group the same way she left the family that sheltered her.

_Dear Korra,_

_I've been thinking about you. More specifically, about our friendship. Don’t you think we went a long way? From disputing for Mako’s attention to how we are now, exchanging these letters. I wouldn’t have imagined this, a few years ago._

_You didn’t even like me, in the beginning. I figured out the reason a little too late, but despite everything that happened with Mako, I always liked you. I’m sorry if that doesn’t seem like it, from the way I just put it. And I know it didn’t seem like it back when you two were dating and I wasn’t around so much. I always said it was just because running a company was so time-consuming, but another reason was that, at first, I didn’t really want to see you guys together._

_I feel bad for saying this, but I really did wait for you and Mako to break up before trying to get closer to you. I just thought it would be easier, this way. But I’m glad I gave our friendship a chance._

_Trying to get closer to you was the major reason I joined you on the search for the new airbenders. After Raiko banished you from Republic City (that man is ridiculous), I realized the future wouldn’t hold many chances for us to spend time together, and I didn’t want to have any resentment about the whole Mako thing be the reason we weren’t good friends. Now I’m glad. Really._

_Missing you,_

_Asami_

_P.S.: I didn’t mean I was waiting for you and Mako to break up to be your friend like I was expecting it. I think you got it…_

It mustn’t have taken long for Korra’s friends to find out she’s neither in the South Pole or in Republic City; you can’t receive letters for someone who isn’t around and not get suspicious. Either way, she writes to her parents, as she promised she would. What Korra might most resent about going on this trip on her own, though, is not getting any response back: it makes it feel all the lonelier. So this is what her friends must have felt when she failed to write back to them.

She misses them so much, and even more now because she hasn’t had any news from them in months. Had she known she was going to change courses on her trip, maybe Korra would have taken a few of the letters she’d been receiving, to have a piece of them with her. How should they be?

Korra often thinks about how things used to be before she was poisoned, and about how things could have been if she never was. Her mind goes through many different memories, relives them, and starts to create a whole new story instead: through Korra’s own personal what-if lens, her body never freezes and, in Jinora’s ceremony, she’s on the stage along with her airbenders peers; afterwards, she gets to do her job and find a way to bring order back to the Earth Kingdom, or find more recently-discovered airbenders; in between that, she spends her afternoons walking around Republic City hand in hand with Asami, or playing fetch with Naga, or helping Tenzin guide the new airbenders, or messing around with Mako and Bolin. Just a different life than the one she’s been taking so far.

Because she has the self-awareness of not taking it too far, and she hopes she already isn’t, her imagination never spirals out of control, incredibly vague in its made-up scenarios. She has no idea of how she would fix things in Ba Sing Se. Not to mention that, amidst so much chaos, Korra wouldn’t think little nuisances would ever bother her, but they still do, and when she thinks back to memories from before and through after Zaheer, these little details always itch on her heart, and many of them revolve around Asami.

There had always been a mutual quiet admiration between the two of them, that grew to mutual quiet hints and then to a mutual quiet understanding. Korra remembers the times Asami grasped her hand, or kissed her forehead, or that one time she laid on bed with her and embraced her for a few minutes, after she was poisoned. She remembers how they both spoke their understanding into existence through letters in those three years, and the comfort it brought. Asami had always been present, somehow. There’s a reason why Korra so often imagines herself holding Asami’s hand: hadn’t Korra been poisoned, maybe Asami and her would have been something else at some point, for a while.

Through so much reminiscing going on in her head, Korra almost misses the three smudges of shadow that flash across the ground on their way to a village’s entrance, where a commotion starts to flock. Getting closer, paying attention, she sees three people with red getups, and then it comes to her— the Air Nation _has_ been providing their support around the world, alright, and new outfits _have_ been designed for all of them. And there they are, with supplies for the villagers.

None of them is anyone she particularly knows. Korra stares nevertheless.

_~~Dear Asami,~~ _

_~~I’m sorry for taking this long to write back. I say that everytime I write to Mako, because, believe it or not, I write less to him than I do to you. I know he must be sick of always reading the same stuff from me. I don’t write to Bolin anymore because I know he’s always on the move now, traveling across the Earth Kingdom with Kuvira. So it’s mostly been Tenzin and you. The kids write to me too sometimes, and they are such sweethearts. Ikki likes to send me her drawings a lot. I wish I could see how they’ve grown. I miss you guys. I want to come back, but I’m still not who I used to be.~~ _

_~~After I arrived in the South Pole, I got a lot of letters. From you, from my old masters I hadn’t spoken to in a while, even one from Ba Sing Se’s Royal Family, all of them wishing me a good recovery and that I would get back on my feet soon. Everybody wanted me to come back so much, but I never did and now I don’t get many of those letters anymore. It feels like they’ve forgotten all about me. And now I don’t write back to those who st~~_

For six months, Korra and the shadows of her past chase each other away like in a push and pull game. Exhausted with fear and exhausted of it, Korra tries to face her past head-on, but ends up drowning in her own shadows— it pulls, pulls, pulls, until drives off into unconsciousness and then wakes up in the middle of the swamp with Toph Beifong.

There’s this surreal sense of familiarity to Toph; Korra’s never seen her before, and she keeps calling Korra nicknames that don’t suit her, but promptly their relationship falls in this realm of weird intimacy. How this old lady who isolates herself from the world can feel “more connected to it than Korra will ever be”, she doesn’t get, but Toph _does_ beat her effortlessly in all the spars they set, and she _does_ point out the remnants of metal poison in her body. Still, she can’t get them out for Korra, though.

Korra resists, _resists_ , and when harsh words and ugly glares don’t make it, Toph tries a new approach instead: in her own way, she shows the swamp around to Korra, exposing her to all the things she’s been trying to run away from, and it’s hours later when Toph finds her sitting on a tree alone. As she walks over to sit with her, it sounds like she actually cares.

“You’re carrying around your former enemies the same way you’re still carrying around that metal poison.” She says. “You need to face your fears. You can’t expect to deal with future enemies if you’re still fighting the old ones.”

In the heart of the swamp, big and beautiful, there’s a tree whose roots spread out across the ground and connect the whole swamp together. Toph illustrates, “Your problem is that you’ve been disconnected for too long, from the people who love you and from yourself,” and, from her, these words sounds natural, so matter-of-factly that maybe Korra should take that, despite the circumstances, Toph might actually _be_ connected to the world, after all.

The energy that the banyan-grove tree emanates calls for Korra somehow, and tactly, instinctively, her answer comes as a palm pressed against a root. As if her spirit could have flown through all those vines away, a vision of Jinora, Ikki and Meelo comes to her mind, and when she sees them rushing to land over to hug her with such bright faces— this feeling that bursts into her heart and flows through her tears, how could it not be love?

“You need to come home, Korra,” Jinora pleads, and all of their faces are a little red from tears. “Kuvira is taking over the Earth Kingdom.”

At Toph’s place, with the five of them surrounding a lit bonfire, Korra knows she’s gotta bend the metal poison out of her body herself; she’ll never move on if she doesn’t take this next step. She breathes in, takes a stance, and insists, even if the memories that her muscles trigger make her want to quit. The poison flows through her arms, then on her skin, then no longer in her body. When she hears Toph say, “That fight is over,” Korra repeats the words in her heart and engraves them onto her body as a newly-found truth. So much lighter, and with her eyes glowing bright, Avatar Korra is back.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading, you can find me on tumblr as [@narultimate-hero3](http://narultimate-hero3.tumblr.com), i'd love to talk


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